As an American myself, I’ve asked several people this question. No one seems to know why either. Is it strategic position in the world? I don’t think they have anything the US can exploit besides that really. Am I missing something? Political arguing aside what exactly is the motivation? Thanks for any explanations.
There are obviously a lot of reasons - one I haven’t seen mentioned here yet is that they’re our only real ally in the region and the best spies in the world; a combination that makes them incredibly attractive as “strategic partners” if the goal is to influence politics in a region you have very little other indirect methods of manipulating.
They’ve worked damned hard to make sure they’re in that position, too. Being invaluable to maintaining US influence in the middle east is the reason the US backs them militarily, and without that backing they’d get absolutely flattened by their neighbors. Thus the toxic symbiotic relationship you see today, with massive campaign contributions and influence operations from both sides designed to ensure they don’t ever lose that mutual support.
They were basically a hedge against USSR in the region for 50+ years. People forget that. Both powers were interested in carving up the world, and Middle East was one of the battlegrounds.
This is the answer as i understand it.
They’re a strategic partner.
Thank you so much for the thoughts, they all make sense.
The region is still very important from a geopolitical standpoint. As last months oil prices have shown.
Israel don’t have (m)any friends in the region. They are a reasonably stable democracy. This makes them a dependable ally. What would happen if there was a revolution in Saudi Arabia for example? Probably something similar to Iran 1979.
So having Israel as an ally is a huge multiplier in power projection in the region.
Why do you need to project power when it’s so expensive? It’s sort of what superpowers do. Meddle in the affairs of smaller countries to further their own goals. If not the US then Russia or China.
deleted by creator
You forgot to write “zionists” instead of “jews”
I think it is the religious end of things; by that the Americans can tell themselves they are protecting god’s chosen people. So in a way they are doing god’s will.
Also money talks and the isreali lobby has lots of it.
As someone who grew up religious, this is it. The people primarily voting maga into power are christians and they fervently believe Israel is right because they are god’s chosen. Religion has absolutely no place in politics or we end up in situations like this.
ding ding ding, this is my exact thought, and I remember my ultra religious dad glazing israel while reading me the bible as a kid.
No thanks.
i think religion does play a huge part of this.
as well as all of its variants – the og books of the bible are centuries old and prone to a lot of interpretations.
apart from that, i believe it is the special interests, the money and their invitations of “pilgrimage” to israel.
AIPAC political donations to lawmakers and politicians. They’re the second largest lobby contributor and influence politicians for Israel.
They’re responsible for the idea behind the Evangelical salvation end days propaganda that induces people to think a war in Israel will bring on apocalypse and rapture.
Who funds AIPAC is probably a better question.
We do. The US government gives billions of dollars to Israel, who in turn launders that back into AIPAC and into our politicians pockets. Sure, there are other donors like Miriam Adelson, but she can’t fund the entire government (even though it takes as little as $10,000 to get a politician to change their vote.)
I imagine the us government can’t fund its own candidates and so has to go this route?
The US government has legalized bribery in the form of Political Action Committees, aka “PACs”. Each PAC is a special interest group that contributes to a politician in order to help get them elected. The PAC then expects an ROI - return on investment - for the money they contributed to the campaign. The ROI usually comes in the form of shilling for said special interest.
To add fuel to the fire, when Citizens United was overturned in 2010, it allowed dark money to be invested into campaigns. This shit was so significant, that I can actually remember where I was when I heard about it and can still feel the echos of dread. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained
This country is fucked. No politician will ever vote to repeal that. Why would they? The amount of money they receive from it would make Scrooge McDuck blush.
jeees you love a religious conspiracy fantasy eh
the jews needed a place to go and palestine had loads of land for sale
the rest is history
WTAF is wrong with you?
If Jewish people have a “Right to exist,” do Palestinians? If not, then where should they go?
People have a right to exist, but states do not. States change. Does Ukraine have a right to exist? They used to be a part of the USSR and were solidly inside those boundaries. Is Russia’s incursion into their sovereign territory lawful?
Where do you draw the line? Who gets to exist and who gets to die? What about the children who were born there? Do you just say, “woops, you suck because I hate your parents. die, babies.”
The future is not history and you are a Zionist prick.
Evangelicals look forward to the rapture. I’ve been to a lot of Evangelical churches, and, without exception, they want it to come.
Do you mean the rapture of -99, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011(sure this time), 2013 (I mean 13, right?!!), 2014, …
That’s my point.
You communicated that part badly, your comment looks like you are saying it’s false and the only reason people believe Evangelicals want that is because of AIPAC.
Well yeah, if that comes then they’re proven right and they get to go to heaven while all the “bad” people stay here.
Because Israel supplied the US with orange juice during the Korean War.
It’s their attack dog in the SWANA region. As Biden said, if Israel did not exist the US would have to create an Israel.
USA has a large population of Jews. Not all are zionists, in fact there have been many anti-zionist Jews protesting against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. However, some are zionists. Some Jews see Israel as a backup plan - if shit goes south in the USA they can always flee there.
USA has a lot of evangelical Christians. Somehow (it’s not in the Bible) they have convinced themselves that a Jewish return to the Holy Land is necessary before the end of the world happens. Which they want to happen, because they believe they are the good guys and will go to heaven.
USA has a lot of racists. They see Israel as an ethnostate, they like that and support it. Their hatred of brown people is stronger than their hatred of Jews so they are happy to see Israel oppress Palestinians.
USA also has anti-semites who are glad to see a place exist where Jews “should” go to. And they are ecstatic that Israel’s genocide of Palestinians is igniting a new wave of anti-semitism.
Many Americans also see Israel as the only democracy in the middle east. It isn’t a democracy, of course, since it has de facto control over Palestine and therefore a huge population is disenfranchised. But wait - rights only for a certain group of people, oppression for the rest - that’s like America when it was “great” (ie pre-Civil Rights era) and they want America “great again”.
This paints an extremely bleak picture of the US population that really doesn’t match reality very well.
To start, there are about 10 million Jews in the US, if we consider the most liberal possible definition of being Jewish, which includes even people who don’t consider themselves Jewish but who live in a Jewish household. Source. With the current US population of 350 million, that means about 3% of the population is Jewish. That is not enough to sway any real policy decisions, unless the group formed an extremely organized voting bloc, which they do not.
Evangelical Christians make up a more significant chunk of the US population, but they tend to be more concerned with restricting women’s bodily autonomy. If you were to grab a random evangelical off the street, they might know about this rapture theory, but they would probably be like “why are you talking to me, I’m trying to buy milk”
It is difficult to measure how many people in the US are racist or antisemetic, since such topics are taboo and people tend not to advertise their stances. But I would guess that the population of racists or antisemites who are really in the weeds enough to support Israel would be lower than the population of Jews. Most of these people are not smart enough to pull off those mental gymnastics.
Instead, the important thing to know about the average American is that they are not keeping up with global geopolitics. They understand that part of the reason for the creation of Israel was so the Jews wouldn’t get genocided again, and they know that Nazis and genocide are bad, so they support it. They might have heard about Hamas, Gaza, or a two state solution, but they would fumble if you asked them to explain the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah, or asked them to point to Gaza on a map of Israel. And if you asked them to explain the two state solution, a lot of them would struggle to remember what the other state even is. Their main concerns if you start talking to them about the Isreal-Palestine conflict are (1) to make sure that you understand that they are not a nazi, and don’t want the Jews to be genocided again and (2) exiting the conversation as soon as possible so they can buy milk and watch Survivor.
You make good points - the reality is that most people whether in the USA or not are “apolitical” and have a surface-level understanding of things. Probably the thing to figure out is how that surface-level understanding is even formed. Those who DO have a strong opinion about things are more likely to be the ones trying to pull “common sense” or surface level understanding toward what they support.
Probably the thing to figure out is how that surface-level understanding is even formed.
I think probably the biggest factor is simply the fact that WW2 occupies such a large space in the American historical zeitgeist. WW2 is a story that makes us look good, and we like stories that make us look good, so we keep telling them. And in the WW2 story, the jews are the victims, and their happy ending is creating a homeland of their own. So the American view, by default, is that Israel has an ethical right to exist as a home state for the jewish people.
Many jews in the united states, especially older jews, are very sympathetic to this view. While they have never experienced systemic persecution themselves, the jewish community at large is bonded over their historic persecution and internally reinforces these norms. Meanwhile, jewish people are significantly overrepresented in the entertainment industry, in wealth, and in positions of political power. The meme of “jews run the world” is a conspiracy theory - but jews do have an outsized influence in society relative to their population. This is likely due to founders effects of immigrating with some level of wealth or expectation of wealth, compounded over time with the additional benefits of being part of a social network which advances its own. For example, a young jewish comedian will have another jewish comedian friend who has an aunt who has a friend who knows Seinfeld’s neice’s boyfriend, who can arrange for him to open at a moderately popular LA comedy club. Being part of the jewish diaspora will give you opportinities that you otherwise wouldn’t get. And so you have a lot of wealthy jews in positions of power in the government and the media, with a culturally imposed mandate to consistently remind the non-jews of the jewish history of persecution and the need to support and protect them from further persecution.
evangelicals and jews in the USA are far more political active though than the majority of the citizenry. there interests are over-represented in government, esp at the federal level.
especially evident by the power of their lobbying groups over members of congress.
This paints an extremely bleak picture of the US population that really doesn’t match reality very well.
lemmy.txt
With the current US population of 350 million, that means about 3% of the population is Jewish. That is not enough to sway any real policy decisions, unless the group formed an extremely organized voting bloc, which they do not.
Consider that much of the Jewish population is condensed into a few important population centers. This makes them a pretty strong voter bloc in some parts of the country.
Highest Percentage by State:
- New York: ~8.5%–8.8%
- Washington D.C.: ~8.4%
- New Jersey: ~6.2%–6.3%
- Massachusetts: ~4.5%
New York, DC & Mass are hardly battleground states, and while I don’t know as much about New Jersey they haven’t voted for a Republican president since Bush Sr
DC isn’t even a state
Voting is nothing, money is everything. Don’t look at it as a matter of votes, but as a matter of donors, and AIPAC is a very significant donor.
Sure, in some parts of the country. But Jewish influence in national US politics comes more from the population’s outsized influence in wealth, certain industries, and political positions - not from the average jewish voting bloc itself.
“Jew” is actually something us Khazars made up around the 12th or 13th century. I’m a partial Khazar, and I never knew that until I learned what it meant.
A wealthy elite from Wall Street to Hollywood with lots in between is a large attractor to support Israel. Every political campaign has to court the jewish vote regardless of stance to stay competitive in votes and campaign finance.
Simon Whistler did a nice video on the history of Israel and US support of it. The US kind of got dragged in early on and solidified its support in dribs and drabs over time, now to the point where people have been convinced that that support is correct.
Evangelicals and the Left Behind theory.
Both of them sponsored by the Jesuit Order.
I don’t think Jesuits would sponsor Evangelicals. They might have similar stupid goals of bringing humanity back into medieval times, but they are in completely different teams.
Ask Dallas Theological Society. They’ll basically admit that the Jesuits basically are behind their curricula.
This is the same with every bible college and seminary today.
I’ve commented before but I will again because I got a lot more answers than I was expecting. Thank you everyone so much, there is a ton of info that I’ve never heard or even considered.
Imbuing governance with religion removes logic and reason from the answer to the equation. You’re looking for a logical reason where there is none.
AIPAC gives money to politicians, Epstein gathers dirt on rich people and politicians- politicians now have to do whatever they are told by Israel. citizens United accelerated this by making it easier to just bribe (sorry “give donations”) politicians than using pedophile honeypots to gain influence
